Lecture 8

Beyond Elasticity:
Plasticity, yielding and
ductility

Jayant Jain

Assistant Professor,
Department of Applied Mechanics,
IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, 110016

Recap
Strength of perfect crystal: theoretical strength

Strength of real crystals: PN stress

Dislocations and their role in plastic deformation

Dislocations are carriers of plastic deformation: Ease of

motion of dislocation decides the strength of crystal
Plastic deformation takes place by slip: One of the most
important mechanisms of deformation
Justified that slip takes place on close packed plane along
close packed direction

Slip systems
Slip system of the three common crystal structure
Crystal
structure
Slip
Plane

Slip

direction
number of
Slip

Systems

BCC

FCC

HCP

Why HCP structured materials are less

ductile???
Because it has limited number of easy slip
systems

Dislocation Movement
For a dislocation to move, only bonds along
the line it moves must be broken this is
significantly easier than breaking all of the
bonds in the plane
In crystals there are preferred planes and
directions for which dislocation movement
is easier these are called the slip planes
and slip directions
Slip displacements are tiny however, if a
large number of dislocations traverse a
crystal, moving on many planes, the material
deforms at a macroscopic level

Materials: engineering, science, processing and design, 2nd edition Copyright (c)2010 Michael Ashby, Hugh Shercliff, David Cebon

Derive an expression on how applied stress

relates to resistance force
This resistance force can be anything: It is
the one that doesn't want dislocation to
traverse through the crystal

Force acting on a dislocation

Crystals resist the motion of dislocations with a friction-like resistance f per
unit length
Dislocations move from an applied shear stress as they move the upper
half of the crystal shifts relative to the lower half by a distance b
Dislocations move if
exceeds f/b

Materials: engineering, science, processing and design, 2nd edition Copyright (c)2010 Michael Ashby, Hugh Shercliff, David Cebon

Remember you don't apply stress on slip

system, you apply stress on crystal which gets
resolved onto the system
Derive an expression that tells you stress
resolved on a given slip system??

If your stress reaches some critical value then

only slip will initiate on a given system

Concept of Resolved shear stress

Erich Schmid (1935)
discovered that if a crystal
is stressed, slip begins when
the shear stress on a slip
system reaches a critical
value, CRSS

Critical Resolved Shear Stress

R cos cos

If R = CRSS
Then slip begins, minimum shear stress to
initiate slip: Critical resolved shear stress

cos cos Schmid factor

Slip occurs first in slip systems oriented close to
( = = 45o) with respect to the applied stress
This tells you about the significance of geometry of slip system
10

Critical Resolved Shear Stress

In response to an applied tensile or compressive
stress, slip in a single crystal begins when the
resolved shear stress reaches some critical
value, crss.
It represents the minimum shear stress required
to initiate slip and is a property of the material
that determines when yielding occurs.

crss
y
(cos cos ) max
11

Critical Resolved Shear Stress

Note crystal orientation can make it easy or hard

R cos cos

R = 0
=90

R = /2
=45
=45

maximum at = = 45

R = 0
=90

Dependence of YS on orientation
factor
Yield stress (MPa)

Hard orientation
0.3

0.2

0.1

Soft orientation
0

0.2

0.4

0.4

coscos

0.2

Single crystal: Pure Magnesium

Question
A zinc crystal (hcp) is oriented with normal to the basal
plane making an angle of 60 with the tensile axis and the
three slip directions x1, x2 and x3 lying on its plane making
angles of 38, 45 and 84, respectively with the tensile axis.
If the plastic deformation is first observed at a stress of 2.3
MNm-2, find which of the three slip directions has initiated
slip and at what value of the resolved shear stress?